Diet and analysis of peptides in urine

Before you start on a diet, it's important to know if the diet is necessary. If you can document that the diet is necessary, it should be easier to get acceptance from doctors and other health workers. The analysis of peptides in urine gives an indication of whether the patient has a food intolerance.

The test is based on the following:

- The digestion of proteins in the food is incomplete - Partially digested proteins (peptides) leak from the gut to the blood stream. - This leak is believed to be increased in patients with inflammatory conditions in the gut (Leaky Gut Syndrome) - Increased uptake of peptides in the blood will lead to increased excretion of peptides in the urine.

The test is primarily used to examine if patients have elevated levels of peptides in the urine. This could indicate an incomplete degradation of milk and/or gluten proteins. This is protein intolerance, not an allergy. If large amounts of such peptides are found, a diet free of casein and/or gluten may improve symptoms in these patients. The results of then urinary peptide analysis are interpreted and commented by dr. med. Gunnar Brønstad (managing director of Neurozym.

The test is particularly useful in disorders such as autism and ADHD. In other disorders, the link to peptides is not well enough documented yet. The test finds opioid peptides with a high degree of certainty, but the connection between peptides in urine and illness is somewhat more obscure.

For patients with autism or ADHD, it may be worth trying a diet if peptides are found in large amounts. If a diet improves stomach/gut problems and behavioral problems, it's likely that the food peptides are responsible for these problems. Many patients have benefited from this diet. For many autistics, it is also necessary to use probiotics to create balance in the gut flora.

Neurozym is the laboratory which performs this analysis. It is a HPLC analysis of urine. The results are interpreted from a chromatogram, a diagram with several peaks. Each peak corresponds to a substance, and the area of the peak corresponds to the quantity. There are many substances in urine, and only a fraction of them are opioid food peptides.